Amazon Kindle Fire HD 6/HD7 Tablet & Kindle Release: Online Retail Giant Unveils New Products
Amazon continues its plight to try and reach the masses with the revelation of a handful of new products, including a $100 Fire tablet and an $80 Kindle.
The $100 Fire HD 6 tablet -- Amazon is dropping the Kindle name for everything but its e-readers -- is Amazon's response to low-quality tablets from other companies sold on the company's website, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
"If you get down to those low price points, you start to trade stuff off," said Amazon Vice President Peter Larsen of other tablet brands. "We hear about it from customers all the time."
Both the Fire HD 6 and the new $140 Fire HD 7 have screen resolutions of 1280x800 pixels, 1.5-gigahertz processors, and better graphics processors. They will both also have front and rear cameras, unlike their predecessors.
Along with its new $80 Kindle, Amazon has announced a premium version of the e-reader called the Kindle Voyage. The $200 Voyage has magnesium casing and is the thinnest Kindle to be developed.
Amazon claims the Kindle Voyage achieves what previous Kindles have set out to do: look as though users are reading a paper book. It has a higher pixel density and is 39 percent brighter, which the company says looks like high-quality paper fiber.
"When we show it to customers -- the ones who love reading -- it's difficult to get it out of their hands," said David Limp, Amazon senior vice president in charge of the Kindle.
The Voyage comes with 3G cellular connectivity, but runs the same software as the Kindle Paperwhite and the $80 touch-screen Kindle, which have plastic bodies.
Amazon announced that the new Fire HD tablets also would be released as Kids Editions for $150 for the 6 and $200 for the 7, Fortune reported. These versions of the tablet will have rubber cases, a two-year replacement plan and one year of access to Amazon's FreeTime subscription service.
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